


soulmates.

by Skyuni123



Series: benthan week 2019 [1]
Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 17:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20231602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyuni123/pseuds/Skyuni123
Summary: benji dunn doesn't know who his soulmate is.he just wishes he'd stop using his body for sport.





	soulmates.

He feels aches and pains all throughout his childhood. His mother takes him to the doctor, who finds nothing wrong, even with the best that money can buy, and just shrugs. "His soulmate's probably a rough-and-tumble type. It'll mellow in time, I'm sure."

But it doesn't.

Benji Dunn is in his late twenties when it happens. He's working as a clerk in a low-rent IT store, trying his best to save up some cash to travel to the States - his family don't like supporting him, anymore - when a sharp pain ripples through his chest and he stumbles, right in the middle of talking to a customer about what the best personal computer is to buy. 

"Are you okay?" The customer, a greying man in his 40s asks, looking concerned. "I'm fine," 

Benji grits his teeth and just hates his soulmate a little more. Most of his 20s are like that too, full of random pain and injury, nothing that lasts, really, except for the time when there's a dullness in his left arm for six weeks and nothing can really shake it. 

He doesn't know if he'll ever meet his soulmate - in a world so large, statistics seem to suggest that only 45% of people meet their soulmate in their lifetimes, and that number is always decreasing - but if he does, he'll absolutely give them a piece of his mind for being so careless with his body.

But then he joins the IMF, and gets a terrible bout of pneumonia, all in the same week. It doesn't quite make up for all of the pain he's felt for the last thirty or so years, but at least when he's lying in bed coughing his lungs out, he's a little pleased that his soulmate is feeling it too.

Once he gets back to the agency, he's hauled through a series of meetings, too many introductions, and so much hand-shaking. There's Will Brandt, an up-and-coming analyst, who's probably about his age, who looks him over with a practised eye, winks, and shakes his hand firmly; Luther Stickell, who he's heard rumours about even OUTSIDE the agency, for his way of doing things; and Ethan Hunt, who is lithe but built like a panther. "Nice to meet you too, Benji." He says, and his blue-eyed gaze is set. Ethan Hunt clearly doesn't like new people, no matter what he says. 

There's a series of other analysts, computer professionals, things like that, who aren't as memorable, but he shakes hands with them all the same.

It's only that evening, when Benji gets home, that he realises that his hand's mottled, covered in streaks of colour and bruising - or at least, that's what it looks like - in the exact shape of a handprint. Fuck. He's met his soulmate, and he has no idea who they are.

So he waits, he sits, he does a little bit of investigating on the side, and rules out at least six people in R&D because they are already soul-bonded. There’s more than 20 single people left, when he finishes. Stickell has a partner, but Brandt and Hunt are both unbonded.

When working for a secret agency, he supposes it’s easier not to get too attached.

The years past, and he’s chosen not to think about it. It’s easier that way.

Of course he wants to find his soulmate, he’s a great big softie at heart, really, but it’s easier to just date around and not get disappointed with the promise of something better.

He still feels pain through the bond, occasionally, that makes him stumble and freeze on the spot during missions, but it hurts less than it did. He’s sure there’s countless papers on how a soulmate connection mellows over time, if not fully bonded, but it hurts a little too much for him to read them.

He wants his soulmate, really.

He just doesn’t know how to find them.

Benji becomes  _ friends,  _ better than friends, with Ethan Hunt, of all people. They make up a team, with rotating members, cause some chaos, save some lives, and it all feels a little like a dream. 

Will Brandt is horribly flirty, annoyingly charming, and just a bit of a bastard - in a way that Benji likes, and somehow doesn’t find completely annoying. They kiss, once, at the IMF Christmas Party in 2012, thoroughly pissed loose-limbed under the mistletoe, and it’s not  _ bad _ .

But he’s not Benji’s soulmate.

He’d  _ know. _

It’s not anyone. There’s no-one it could be. He’s thought about all the options.

Maybe he brushed hands with a barista, or nudged into someone on the street. Maybe, maybe, maybe- 

Maybe it’s just better not to hope. 

They’re chasing an impossible cause in Morocco, when it happens. Ethan’s diving through the Torus, hacking systems so Benji can steal some data. It’s all working out, the data’s on the drive, he’s on the way to his car to meet Ethan and Ilsa at the rendezvous and-

He collapses, down onto one knee and breathes sharply through his teeth. It hurts, like tons and tons of water have been shoved down his throat, and the pressure is building. 

The nearby guard looks at him in concern, offering a hand, but Benji just waves at him, mutters and apology and drags himself to his car, the pressure on his heart and his chest pounding through his body.

He feels like he’s dying.

He feels like he’s about to die.

As he throws himself onto the car seat, the pain is gone as soon as it arrived.

It’s not relief he feels, but emptiness. Wrongness. A faint nausea.  _ Something’s wrong. Ethan’s hurt.  _

He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he does. He can feel it in his bones. He needs to get to the others as soon as possible, he knows that much. 

Electricity shocks through him, a lightning bolt of power and pain - but it’s not his pain, it’s his soulmate’s - and he stumbles into the opening by the outflow pipe, to see Ilsa and Ethan, soaking wet but alive. The relief that jolts through him is instantaneous and fulfilling.

But Ethan’s not moving.

“Is he-”

“Fine.” Ilsa says. She moves, almost faster than imaginable, but maybe that’s just the afterimage of the pain, hanging in his head. “...Sorry.”

And with that, she knocks him out. 

  
  


Ethan hauls him to his feet, what seems like mere moments later, and grabs him by the hand. He brushes his hand across the colourful palm print on Benji’s hand, almost without thinking and -

It feels  _ right.  _

After ten years they’ve never really touched in such a way and Ethan looks at him in such amazement and fear that it’s almost staggering. “You…” He breathes, “That introductory meeting - it was you?”

“Yeah.” Benji says, dumbly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “It was me.”

“I’m glad it was.” Ethan says, and grins beatifically, and amazingly, and hey, Benji suddenly knows why he’s so good at honeypot missions. He clasps Benji on the hand, squeezes tightly over the soulmark, and says, “Later… we should. Talk. About this. After we stop Ilsa?”

“After we stop Ilsa,” Benji nods, and squeezes their clasped hands. A shiver runs along his arm and down his spine - a shiver with promise, and weight, and excitement behind it.

He can’t wait to see where it goes next. 

(At least this explains all the aches and pains.)

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on the [ tumblr ](http://eph-em-era.tumblr.com)


End file.
